Touch of the skin brings trembles and shivers
by Semi-Retired Writer
Summary: Prompt fill for Whumptober 2019 day 1, shaky hands! It's just 900 words of Peter having a bad time with a dissection in class.


**Touch of the skin brings trembles and shivers**

He'd seen it coming.

How couldn't he? It was a natural follow-up to how anatomy class was developing over the past few weeks. It capped off every semester of this course if the cyclic stressed whispers were anything to go by. And on top of that, his teacher just last week had said, verbatim, "Next week, you'll be pairing up in teams of two to get some hands-on experience with this."

So yeah, he had few doubts about what was coming.

Knowing wasn't experiencing, though. It was one thing to worry about theoretically defiling the dead for his education, but quite another to walk into the classroom to the overpowering smell of ammonia.

"Shit, I should've taken earth science instead."

It was Flash's voice lamenting from a few feet further into the room. Peter never thought he'd come to agree on anything with Flash, but he supposed today was the day.

A soft shove reminded him that he was, in fact, blocking the doorway. He forced his feet toward a lab table, not particularly caring which one he landed at. It wasn't like he already had a partner anyway. He'd spent the week in varying degrees of denial and stress and hadn't given a second thought to who would be willing to suffer through this with him.

MJ solved that problem almost immediately. She made a beeline for his table and plopped down beside him, noticeably more excited than he was. He latched onto that convenient distraction.

"I thought you were against animal cruelty. What gives?"

It was a bit of a trick on Peter's end. Ever since MJ had become his friend, he'd learned that her usual "woman of few words" routine disappeared as soon as someone roped her into one of the topics she was passionate about. Animal cruelty was always a good bet, and she didn't disappoint today, leaping at the opportunity to explain her stance on the value of dissections despite the presumed harm. With no prodding on his part, she kept up a steady stream of conversation until the final bell rang and cut her off.

Mr. Harrington started his introduction to the lab as soon as the noise tapered off. It was a relatively sparse explanation, but fair given how much time they'd already spent studying the theory. He gestured toward the specimens and wrapped up with a quick, "Well, have at it!"

To Mr. Harrington's credit, he'd gone above and beyond for his semester project. There weren't only frogs waiting on the counter in the back of the room, but birds, rabbits, turtles, and even a couple cats. It was understandably hard for Peter to see that as a positive at the moment, but he could recognize the effort that had gone into this.

MJ didn't even ask for his input before marching confidently to their options and returning with a tray full of frog. She theatrically laid it in front of him like a special dish at a high-class restaurant. He didn't know whether to shudder or giggle at the sheer audacity and compromised by staring in mildly stunned silence.

He looked into the corpse's eyes, somehow glued to the horrific sight. He didn't even feel himself start shaking, but at some point he came back to himself and realized that was exactly what he was doing.

MJ must have left him for another moment, and he only realized when she laid their tools down in the middle of the table. She took the chance to pin the limbs down and then gestured at him to make the first cut.

With a gulp, he moved to grab the scalpel, missing on his first try.

_It'll be over in an hour. I'll be done in an hour. I can forget this forever in an hour._

He kept up his mantra as he went back for the scalpel, successfully plucking it from its place this time.

But with the knife literally to the frog's throat, the realization that he was aggressively _not ready_ finally settled in him.

The shaking picked up until he couldn't even keep his grasp on the scalpel. It clattered to the table, just loud enough to earn a few curious glances their way. He held his breath for a few seconds.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't do this. I just can't."

MJ levelled a stare at him, thoroughly unimpressed, but she didn't fight him on it. She simply picked up the scalpel and resumed their project. In the back of his mind, he made a mental note to bring her cookies or something tomorrow.

But for now, he settled for watching in horrified silence. He took pride in himself for at least making this much of an attempt to learn from the dissection.

It was admittedly helpful to watch MJ remove the organs piece by piece, turning them in her hands to get a better sense of their shape and composition.

He would've almost called it a near-positive learning experience, but then… then, the scalpel slipped. A small slip was all it took. Formaldehyde spurted from the depths of the frog and even spidey senses didn't lend him the prudence to dodge the impending blow to his t-shirt.

Now, _that_ was too much.

Three long strides brought him to the trash can, which was lucky because that was all the time he had before vigorously yeeting his breakfast back into the plane of existence.

Flash was right. He should've taken earth science.


End file.
